


Bean

by DominusFero



Category: Camp Camp (Web Series)
Genre: Adopted Children, Father-Daughter Relationship, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Healing, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Moving On, One Big Happy Family, Origin Story, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Sad with a Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-09
Updated: 2020-02-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 01:28:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22625566
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DominusFero/pseuds/DominusFero
Summary: As most young children do, Opal asks her fathers a very simple question: where do babies come from?Simple enough, however, deeper, darker secrets lie within Opal's origins and how safe is it for her fathers to reveal the truth?
Relationships: Daniel & Max (Camp Camp), Daniel/David (Camp Camp), Daniel/David/Jasper (Camp Camp), Daniel/Jasper (Camp Camp), David & Max (Camp Camp), David/Jasper (Camp Camp), Jasper & Max (Camp Camp)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 13





	Bean

"Where do babies come from?"

The sudden piercing grip of not five but ten sharply manicured nails burned the flesh on Jasper’s arms. It was a wonder that such a simple question earned such a painful response. One husband stammered his way through a mouthful of gibberish while the other averted his eyes in embarrassment, hand behind his head as he scratched his scalp as if that would provide an answer. Both their faces flush as cherries, neither really wanted to or knew exactly how to create a palpable explanation.

"Ehm, well, Opal...uhm, w-wh-, ehrm..." David was a hopeless mess. Things such as this always struck him uncomfortable. He had barely even managed to force out his beginning sentence of the puberty talk with Max before Daniel swooped in like an angel from above and saved him from a doomed fate.

"Well, Opal," Daniel interrupted, flexing his fingers while they were interlocked with each emphasis of his words, "when a man and woman love each other, sometimes they want to show that love to children. But children don't just...appear. They have to be made."

“Like a cake?" The strawberry blonde six-year-old asked innocently.

"Kind of," Daniel admitted, still dancing around his initial point. He leaned back against the couch that the three of them had been sharing, patting his leg to symbolize his desire to have his daughter sit upon it. Once the small girl climbed onto his lap, he put an arm around her waist, biting his lip to try to conjure up a simplified version of biology. "See, when the man and woman want to make their baby...they, uhm-"

"They squish their bodies together and use a special juice the man makes in his body to make the woman fat. A little while later, a baby is born from the woman's special place."

“Jasper!!" David screeched at the sandy blond, his face now a dark brick color. "You can't say that!!"

"Well, I already did. That's as censored as I'm going to get while still being scientifically accurate. We can't lie to her, you know. She'll end up taking health class at some point." Daniel was shaking, wearing a look on his face like he was hiding something in his mouth and was afraid to let it out. Laughter was threatening to spill loose. "Opal, love, I promise we'll tell you all the details when you're older but for now, that's how babies are made." Jasper patted her head affectionately, running his fingers through her curling locks. She looked so much like David and Daniel; it was uncanny.

"Oh...okay, Papa." She sighed with a smile, her rosy little cheeks dimpling a bit. She sat in Daniel's lap, playing with his hands. Comparing his to hers by pressing the bases of their palms together, her fingertips only reaching the beginning of his fingers. Her skin was softer, his was rougher due to age and use, even if he moisturized. Her fingers were thinner, fat due to being a child but thin as a female. He was a light skin tone; she was darker but still the same basic ethnicity: Caucasian. These little details stuck out in her mind, prompting her next question. "Papa, Daddies, where did I come from?"

"Oh-uhm," David began before catching himself. Did he really want to tell her she was born in a toilet? He looked at Jasper and Daniel for guidance.

"Opal, sweetheart, we won't lie to you. We didn't help make you." Daniel calmly informed the little girl.

"You didn't?"

"No, the lady who helped make you, something was very wrong with her." Not a lie. Not in the slightest.

"Was she sick?"

"In her head. Sometimes people have things wrong in their head and it can't be fixed." David spoke softly, fear still very evident in his voice. He was teetering on the edge of having a breakdown because he hardly had the heart to tell his own daughter that her birth parents discarded her like trash. Daniel patted his hand reassuringly, rubbing his knuckles with his thumb.

"That lady left you in the bathroom at my work, you know the big building full of tools and cars that you've been to?" Opal nodded readily, bouncing with excitement. She loved Jasper’s repair shop. The huge waiting room was easily her favorite. Lots of snacks to munch on and plenty of TVs to watch all her beloved cartoons on while Papa worked extra hard. His office, however, was like an entirely new dimension. She absolutely adored rolling around in his huge leather desk chair. "I found you and got you cleaned up at the hospital. And when you were better, we took you home."

"Oh...cool!" That made Jasper chuckle. Of course, she could find something to be happy about in a sea of bad. Being around David for six years, his chipper, happy-go-lucky attitude must have rubbed off on her. "Papa?"

"Yes, Opal?"

"Why's my name Opal?"

“Oh, because we named you after a pretty gemstone. Just like me. I’m named after a pretty gem, too.”

“Ohhh.” The small child mused. “Why’s my second name Lo-Lo-Lo-Wayne?”

Jasper felt all the warmth of Daniel's hand, what little there was, suddenly extinguish at the drop of a hat. Painful memories were swelling.

"You were named after your grandmother, Lorraine, Daddy's mommy." Jasper placed a hand on Daniel's shoulder.

"Is she pretty?"

"She was beautiful." The blond adult sighed wistfully. "She was kind and sweet, just like you are, bean. She had a beautiful voice, one that I can still hear in my dreams. I see her smile in you, you know." He playfully poked his daughter in the tum, making her giggle.

"Did she like nature like Daddy does?"

"Of course, she did. But really, she loved talking about the stars. Do you know how we pray to Xemüg? She would always put out a small offering under the moonlight because she believed Xemüg could visit by walking on moonbeams. She was open to the world around her, she adored taking on all new possibilities-!" The light in his eyes suddenly died when the heavy truth decided to smack him across the face. "But...but she's gone now. Has been for a while."

Opal moved closer to Daniel, sitting right at the base of where his legs met his torso.

"Where'd she go?"

Daniel bit his lip then, internally debating if he should lie or tell the truth. Neither Jasper nor David wanted to interrupt him to save him on the grounds that he may choose to inform her of her family's past. Then again, she was only six, how much did she even need to know?

"She's with Xemüg, bean. Living happily in her paradise, free from all the bad of the world. She's helping unite the galaxy, make everyone friends."

"Oh..." she suddenly dropped and hugged him tightly, catching the blond adult off his guard. "I'm sorry your momma's gone, Daddy."

Jasper did not quite recognize the initial pinprick of tears at his eye but once he did, it was far too late to stop himself from silently sobbing. David bawled his eyes out as per usual, a sniveling mess of emotional ruin. Daniel, however, only shed a single tear, the pupils of his eyes shaking with a rush of mixed emotion.

He quickly stole his darling bean up into his arms, cuddling and cradling her as if it was his last chance to do so. He pets her hair, combing it softly as he nestled his face into it, placing gentle pecks on her forehead.

"Thank you, bean...thank you..." he whispered.

At six years old, Opal was a little mature in some ways. She knew that losing a parent, in terms of never seeing them again as she had yet to know of the concept of death, was an extremely trying time in a person's life. To her, it made her daddy sad that he no longer had his mommy, that he could no longer do the things with his mommy that she could with her daddies. She did not need to know how she was gone or why. She just knew that her gramma Lorraine was no longer on this earth. She understood from all of her daddy Daniel's little prayers and sermons that Xemüg would keep her gramma Opal safe. And she was content knowing that. At six years old, she knew enough to be considered mature, but at six years old, she still indeed acted her age in other ways.

A little while later, she was on her stomach coloring a duo of pictures that she had drawn with crayons. A little dash of red here, lots of yellow there and LOTS of black squiggling loops here. Once she finished, she ran with the two eight-by-eleven-inch sheets decorated with her scrawl out of her bedroom and down the hall into the 'Big Room', also known as her parents' room. Not too long after their conversation earlier, Daniel had gone and laid down for a nap, not really in the mood to be emotionally tormented. Leaping with a running start, Opal jumped onto the king-sized bed with the lone curled body atop it, bouncing some life back into his being.

"Daddy! Daddy! Daddy! Look, look, I got a present for you!" Crawling up to his face, the little girl shoved the first paper right in front of his barely open eyes. "Look, look! I drew you and Daddy and Papa and Maxxy and me!"

Tired and hardly able to function, the blond adult peered at the bright neon scribble.

"Oh, that's very nice, bean."

He, as a stick figure, was holding hands with Jasper and David, all smiles and happy. Max was on one side of the paper and Opal was on the other, holding hands and smiling under a bright yellow sun surrounded by flowers and grass. A very lovely little family photo.

"I made you this one, too!"

This one was a small picture of just him and her as stick figures with wide, open smiles surrounded by messily written text and crude little pink and magenta hearts.

_My daddy is the **BESTEST** in the world!!! He is smart and funny and nice and he ~~signs~~ sings good toO! I love my daddy becuase he loves me. He has a nice smile and gives nice hugs and ~~smells nice and~~ even when he is sad, he still loves me._

Daniel was not aware he was crying until he heard Opal ask him why. He responded in a shaky tone laden with great emotion.

"I'm just so happy, bean," followed by a hug and a barely audible, "I love you."

**Author's Note:**

> Bean, as you have seen, is Daniel's nickname for Opal. He's a good dad when he wants to be.  
> Yes, Daniel still holds onto his religion. No matter the redemption arc, I can't see him abandoning it so easily. And ofc he would teach it to his kids.  
> Yes, both David and Daniel are 'Daddy' to Opal and that's because of 2 things: 1. the obvious canon similarity between the two 2. I couldn't figure out a third synonymous nomenclature for 'father' that would fit a 6 yr. old


End file.
